


Secondary Exposure

by thesardine



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-06
Updated: 2011-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-21 02:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesardine/pseuds/thesardine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Sherlock: "If you were dying, if you were murdered, in the very last seconds, what would you say?"<br/>John: "Please God, let me live."<br/>Sherlock: "Use your imagination."<br/>John: "I don't have to." </i></p><p>After twenty years, the killer who abducted John as a child has resurfaced.  Now John and Sherlock must track him down before he claims another victim, and at the same time navigate the shifting nature of their relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was raining that evening, and Sherlock was stuck at home. When it rained in the summer, the air was permeated with a thick acrid odor that steamed off the cement for only a moment before being washed away. Sherlock hated that moment, just when it started to rain; it had a way of piercing his senses just enough to cause him to pause and note the mundane fact that yes, indeed, it was once again raining. The windows were open just a crack at the base, and the cool night time air drifted in off the street. John was sitting in his chair where he always sat, just reading a newspaper. He could be so impossibly content, utterly disinterested in the most recent case. Sherlock suddenly recalled that he hadn't actually told John about it yet, and he nearly leaped into the chair opposite him, hands poised in the air descriptively, though he had yet to describe anything.

"Look, John," he said. John calmly folded his newspaper and set it aside.

"You're finally going to tell me, then?"

Affronted, Sherlock said, "You could have asked."

"I did ask. Several times, in fact." John threaded his fingers together and settled back into his chair. "Well?"

Sherlock considered not telling him, if John was going to take an attitude. He needed to have out the facts, though; it helped him think.

"Yesterday morning Scotland Yard received a call from Cudham reporting the discovery of a human skeleton, the remains of Jackson Long, a fourteen year old boy who disappeared ten years ago." Sherlock shifted eagerly to the edge of his seat. "Now, as the police searched the area for further evidence, another body was discovered, three months old, a sixteen year old boy from Battersea. Of course, they weren't identified until today, and by the time they called me in they had already...moved everything.

"Neither body evidenced severe trauma, and the cause of death has not been immediately apparent. They were discovered within 60 yards of each other, though the times of death span the better part of a decade." Sherlock leaned forward conspiratorially, his eyes gleaming. "Both boys were in mid adolescence, blond hair, blue eyes, athletic frame, and both disappeared from suburban areas. Over the last twenty years nine such boys have been reported missing, and of those nine, eight have disappeared from within a ten mile radius of where we are right now." He leaned back and steepled his fingers before his chin. "What do you make of that?"

John hesitated a curiously long time before venturing, "Hadn't you better tell me?"

"No," Sherlock said simply. "An erroneous assessment will often shed light on a more lucrative line of inquiry."

John's brow clouded in annoyance. He opened his mouth, shut it, and shifted where he sat. "Right. Good." He cleared his throat and, frustratingly, paused again, his expression settling into something inscrutable. He dismissed some thought with a slight shake of his head, and Sherlock's eyes narrowed, divining without success John's unvoiced thoughts.

"Well," John finally began. "Um, serial killer, obviously, right? With a car, because he had to get them out to the country. They couldn't have struggled very much because some one would have noticed. Probably. Where were they last seen?"

"School. Always a weekday, for all the boys."

"Alright, so they probably had a schedule, and this person knew the schedule, knew where and when he could find them alone, or they knew him already, but..." John tapered off and stared past Sherlock, lost in thought. Sherlock knew he could get sentimental when children were killed, but this was absurd. It certainly didn't speed up the investigation. Irritation had just begun to fester at the back of Sherlock's skull when John abruptly continued.

"Drugs, possibly; ether. They must have been unconscious for the ride out, but ether wouldn't last that long. He may have hit them on the head, or gone for the carotid artery. Drove them out to the country, strangled them, buried the bodies -"

'Strangled, why do you say strangled?"

Again, John hesitated. "Seems likely, doesn't it? No visible trauma; stabbing, beating, bullets are out. And you wouldn't kidnap someone and then use poison, would you? I don't know, I just - "

"No," Sherlock said, "it's fine. I'd considered strangulation myself. I wondered why you'd said it."

John quirked a half smile. "I'm spending too much time around you."

Sherlock stood suddenly and resumed his pacing. "If it alters your thought process to coincide with mine, I should consider that a vast improvement."

John's smile turned incredulous. Anything he may have said in defense of his intellect, Sherlock preempted with a brusque "Anything else?"

There was another long silence. "John -"

"No," John said quickly. "Nothing else. Not much to go on, really, is there?"

Sherlock paused in front of his laptop, scrolling through a few messages. "We'll see," he mused. "I have Lestrade's lackeys compiling data on all the missing boys. I'll need you to sort through it while I'm at the lab. If there are any -"

"I can't," John interrupted. Sherlock jerked around and faced him.

"What?"

John raised his eyebrows. This gormless sod in a cheap button down shirt: what could he possibly be doing? "I can't. I have a medical conference."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed quizzically. "Yes, but that's boring."

"It happens to be my job, Sherlock. You know, the job that I have that actually makes money so that I can pay for things?"

Sherlock favored him with a look utterly lacking in comprehension. Finally he said, "How long will you be gone?"

"Three days, I told you. I'll be back on Sunday."

Slowly, Sherlock turned away. "Very well," he said, gaining momentum until he was once again lost in thought. Frankly, John's response to the case had been rather annoying in the first place. He bent over his laptop again. Some remote part of his brain noticed the stiffness with which John retreated from the room.

 

  
Sergeant Donovan arrived at the flat at 8 o'clock the next morning. She was still wearing the suit Sherlock had seen her in yesterday, so she hadn't been home. The skirt was wrinkled and her complexion was listless and sallow. No canoodling with Anderson, then; she had spent the night at the office. In her arms she held a heavy ream of papers - the files Sherlock had demanded of Lestrade. He had expected them delivered, but not by Donovan of all people.

"Ah, lovely," he said, when he'd opened the door. He reached for his files but she turned her shoulder to him.

"Not quite, Freak. I have some questions first."

Sherlock sighed heavily. John came to stand in the doorway to the kitchen, nursing his second cup of coffee. He'd had a late night as well; Sherlock had heard him pacing about his room till the wee hours of the morning. Not good for his medical conference, or whatever it was he thought was so important.

"I am sure that mind of yours abounds with questions, Sergeant. Unfortunately, never the right ones, and I don't have time for any other kind."

"Lucky," she replied archly. "They're not for you. They're for him." She jerked her chin at John, who adopted that curiously inscrutable expression from the night before. Sherlock shot him a glance, and Sally drew a file from the top of the stack, a xeroxed police report with a color photo attached to the front. Sherlock glanced at it quickly, then honed in on the photo: young boy, about sixteen. Sandy hair parted on the right, blue eyes crinkled at the edges even then. Familiar, self-deprecating smile. Homely cable knit jumper. Sherlock snatched at the file but Donovan pulled it out of reach, eyes both steadily on John. Sherlock stood back from the door and fixed his incredulous stare on John as well, who was looking at some point just past Donovan's ear. She held the file up again.

"What can you tell me about this?"


	2. Chapter 2

Donovan cleared a spot at the table. Last night Sherlock had become suddenly ravenous at 3am, and he had cooked himself a pasta alfredo, the remains of which had long congealed in the pot he had eaten out of. Donovan set this atop Sherlock's research, which she had unceremoniously swept aside. She had accepted John's offer of coffee, and he was now taking an inordinately long time procuring her a cup.  
That John, of all people, should prove vital to solving two decades worth of serial murders - that anything this interesting had happened to him at all - was baffling, to say the least. And not the least of all because he had been sharing a flat with Sherlock Holmes for six months, who had never suspected anything, had never observed anything to give him cause to consider. After Donovan's revelation Sherlock had done nothing but stupidly stare, mouth even slightly agape, while John had rallied his ingrained etiquette, gestured to the sitting room, and said, "Coffee, tea, anything?"

Donovan was now moving in on Sherlock's laptop, and he lunged forward and snatched it away from her. To be quite honest, the events of the last ninety seconds had left him considerably off balance. He clutched the laptop rigidly to his chest, as though the solemn weight were his last tenuous link to reality. _John,_ of all people.

John emerged from the kitchen, brushed past his immobilised flatmate, and handed Donovan her coffee. He settled himself at the opposite end of the table, and Donovan flapped his file down before him. He skimmed absently through it, and Sherlock lowered himself onto the arm of a chair. He was vaguely aware that his grip may very well have been denting the laptop, but that was hardly significant. Not compared to this. Only because it would have been counterproductive, did Sherlock refrain from transferring that iron grip to his flatmate's shoulders in an effort to bodily shake answers from his lips.

"So," John said, after the expiration of several eternities. "What do you want to know?" Leave it to him to say something insipid in moments of monumental intrigue.

"I'm assuming you know about our recent discoveries," Donovan began. John nodded. "How much did the Freak tell you?"

John narrowed his eyes. "Just the basic facts, _Sergeant_."

Donovan gestured to John's file. Sherlock's fingers positively itched for that file, but this was more important. The laptop casing groaned feebly.

"You're aware, then, that you fit the victims' profile."

At this, John hesitated. "That does appear to be the case."

Donovan raised her eyebrows. "If it is, that makes you the only known survivor of a string of murders perpetrated over the course of the last twenty years." When John didn't respond, she sighed and retrieved the file. She leafed through it, her exhaustion plain. "It says here that you were abducted off of Sunny Way, North Finchley, on the 17th of May, 1990, at approximately 6:15pm. You were discovered the following morning on Coppice Row in Theydon Bois at about seven o'clock - "

"Tell me from the beginning, John," Sherlock said. John shot him a fleeting glance, but looked back to Donovan, as though for confirmation.

"Don't look at her. _I_ need to know what happened."

John flushed with sudden anger. "Anything either of you need to know is already in the report!"

"Not good enough. I need to hear it from you."

Infuriatingly, John looked again to Donovan. Her eyes were closed, her fingertips delicately pressed to her temple. She leaned back in her chair, drew a sweeping gesture from Sherlock to John, beckoning them to continue. The heat dropped from John's face and he stared into his coffee for a black moment. He checked his watch.

"It was a Thursday," he began. "I was coming home from practice - "

"For what?" Sherlock demanded.

"Football. I was walking to the bus stop, I always took the eastbound at 6:25. I was on Sunny Way and...I guess someone pulled up behind me. I heard the car, but I didn't look. Someone got out and grabbed me from behind - "

"How did he grab you? Be specific."

"Around, like, his hand over my face." John's voice had taken on a peculiar rasping quality.

"Right or left hand?"

"Left."

"What was he doing with his right hand?"

"I don't know, around my shoulders, I suppose."

"Was it ether, then?"

Again, John hesitated. "I can't...It wasn't...I blacked out under some sort of anesthetic, but I can't be sure what it was. There was a peculiar odor, chemical, perhaps, but I think I would recognize ether. By now, I mean. I really can't say.

"Fine. Continue." Sherlock had settled his laptop upon his knees, and he drew his fingers lightly from corner to corner. John had both hands wrapped tightly around his cup of coffee, which by then must have certainly been cold.

"Um. So," John rallied. "I woke up in a, um...room. Cabin. There may only have been one room. Anyway, it was dark. Not because it was dark out, but he had the windows covered and there was only one light, from the ceiling." John cleared his throat and picked up speed. "I was gagged and tied to a chair, at the ankles and my wrists around the back - look, Sherlock, can't you just read the file?"

"I fully intend to do so, but you underestimate the value of a firsthand report."

"Feel like a bloody idiot," John muttered. He sipped his coffee and grimaced. "Alright, so this man, couldn't have been more than thirty, thirty-five, was standing before me, tall, sort of medium build, with blond hair. He did start to strangle me, you'll be pleased to note, but he stopped and went for the rope, which he'd already gotten ready in a...in a hangman's noose, and he tossed it over the ceiling beam, so it's pretty, um, obvious what he intended to do, right, so I snapped the joint on my right thumb, which gave me enough leeway to pull free, and that loosened it enough to free my other hand, so when he was lowering the goddamn noose around my neck, I hit him as hard as I could and grabbed onto him and knocked him over and got my weight on top of him and just kept hitting him." John paused bitterly, then collected himself and continued more calmly. "I was still tied to the chair at this point, at the ankles, so it was a bit awkward. If I hadn't caught him off guard it wouldn't have worked. I got in a lucky shot the first time, and then kept hitting him until he didn't move. I needed the time to untie my ankles. I wasn't - I wasn't afraid, not at that point. I knew I had to knock him out, so that's what I did. Then I untied myself, ran off, it was still light out but I got lost in the woods. In the morning I flagged someone down and she took me to the police."

Donovan shifted forward, and Sherlock glanced at her. He had thoroughly forgotten her presence.

"You suffered a blow to the back of the head," she said. "Do you remember how that happened?"

"No," John said calmly. "He may have hit me earlier. I don't recall."

Donovan nodded. It was clear from her reaction that John hadn't stated anything new. "Serial killers tend to operate in familiar areas, John. That he was aware of your location, alone, at that point on your regular route suggests that he'd tailed you for awhile. We're operating on the assumption that he was living in the areas from which each of these boys was abducted, putting him in or around Battersea right now. If you were presented with a line of suspects now, do you think you would be able to identify him?

John shook his head. "I don't know."

Donovan heaved one last sigh and then stood, swiping along the bottom of her eyes. "Alright. Thank you, John, and I'm sorry to have to have dragged this up. If anything occurs to you, if you remember anything, give us a ring, yeah?"

"You'll be the first to know."

Sherlock snorted.

"Call us," Donovan repeated, and this time looked at Sherlock. "Don't do anything stupid." She thanked John for the coffee and showed herself out.

 

"You didn't mention this yesterday. Why?" Sherlock asked. John was clearing the table, two mugs in one hand, cautiously examining Sherlock's pasta pot. He drew a deep breath and carried everything to the kitchen.

"I didn't know it was the same person. In fact, that still isn't - "

"Oh, don't add naivete to an already appalling list of shortcomings, John." Sherlock rose suddenly and snatched up the file. "And don't tell me that's all you remember, or did you literally fail to notice anything of significance about this man?" He spared a moment to consider that if John continued to bang everything in the kitchen around in such a careless manner, he would be sure to break something. Sherlock perused the pages until he reached John's description of the killer. Clean shaven, sandy blond hair, blue eyes. Interesting.

"Athletic build?" he called out. "John?"

John came to stand in the doorway to the kitchen, drying his hands on a small towel. He was obviously quite irritable this morning. It was annoying. "You said he was of medium build. Would you consider it athletic?"

"A bit, not really."

"You were able to overpower him while drugged and bound to a chair. How did you manage that?"

"Lucky shot. And adrenaline, I suppose. The nerves at the base of the nose - "

"Yes, I know that. Though at sixteen, you probably didn't. Lucky shot then. I see he used clothes line. You weren't the first he abducted, but you are the first he tried to kill in this manner."

John crossed his arms. "How do you figure?"

"The give, John, obviously. It saved your life." At John's blank expression Sherlock sighed deeply. "Clothes line will stretch considerably when it is new. If he had used it before, he would have known that, especially had he attempted to string someone up with it. According to the missing persons profile, you appear to have been the second victim, which explains the precision with which he was able to execute the abduction until that point." Sherlock's mind delved into this track. Having an idiot around could be quite valuable, if the idiot were John. "He'd begun to strangle you manually, but stopped, suggesting an inclination to brutality at odds with his systematic approach. He wished to see you suffer, but not directly at his own hand, hence the noose, which -"

"Well then, I'll leave you to it," John said. His posture was rigid and he brushed his hands briskly down the sides of his trousers.

"Nonsense, John. You're my greatest clue."

"No, really. I'm off." John checked his watch. "I'll see you Sunday."

Sherlock ground to a halt. John had stepped into the hall and was collecting his small weekend suitcase.

"You - what? You can't possibly -"

"Medical conference, Sherlock."

Sherlock was at an utter loss. For the second time that morning he stood in the hall, staring slack-jawed at his flatmate, though the reasons for these two occasions were so different as to be incomparable.

"You have my file. And, as you said, I don't seem to have noticed anything of significance, it's rather redundant that I should be here, isn't it?"

"Oh, if I've _offended_ you - "

John rounded on him with a thinly veiled ferocity. He held Sherlock's gaze for a highly charged moment while he measured his words. "Do you know what I was," he said. "Before I met you? Before I became your greatest clue?"

Sherlock's eyes narrowed and he drew back minutely.

"I was a highly skilled professional, Sherlock. A surgeon. Who actually saved peoples lives on occasion. Alright? That's what I did. As shocking as this is to you, I did exist before we met."

Sherlock experienced a curious cold tremor in the pit of his stomach. "Of course. Far be it for me to infringe upon your valuable time. I certainly wouldn't want to inconvenience the great John Watson, _surgeon_."

John looked away with a shake of his head. "Right," he said tersely. "I'm going."

Fuming, Sherlock watched him leave. When he heard John reach the landing, he stormed back into the sitting room and began reorganizing the data that Donovan had moved. The laptop was forcefully returned to the table, files angrily gathered and slapped into a pile; a cushion was thrown from one end of the room to the other. At the window Sherlock paused and peered out from behind the curtain. John had already crossed the street, dragging his stupid little rolling suitcase, wearing his vile brown and frumpy blazer. He didn't even once glance back at the flat. In all the times Sherlock had watched him go, he never had.


	3. Chapter 3

The woman was about thirty-five, and good looking. Her hair was black and straight, shorn into an austere bob that contrasted strikingly with her red lips, and a smile that was all teeth. Showy for a doctor, but for ambitious young professionals, the banquet at a medical conference was probably all the socialising allowed into their schedules. Not that John would know, never actually having been an ambitious young professional. And the army wasn't much of a social platform.

She was wearing a two piece, semi-formal evening set in burgundy, and naturally, she was surrounded by a set of equally ambitious young men, all vying for her attention. She had her sights set on the tall one, her head cocked coyly to one side. She knew exactly when to laugh.

John was seated at the far end of a long, empty table. Dinner had been a tedious affair, which was irritating not of itself, but because John had been determined to enjoy it. In fact, he had been determined to enjoy the entire conference, but instead had been thinking about Sherlock bloody Holmes the entire time, and while this didn't surprise him, the impunity of it made him angry; that after the altercation the previous morning, John should be the one to feel guilty.

Sherlock didn't do guilt. By his own assessment, he was clinically incapable of it. However, for all his arrogance, impatience, and foul tempers, he wasn't a cruel person, and John alone was in the position to observe that Sherlock's asperity was largely defensive. That he had resorted to caustic sarcasm yesterday had indicated that, in some bizarre way, John had made him feel threatened. John had nearly been murdered, and after twenty years that memory was being raked up, laid out, and dissected, and _Sherlock_ felt defensive. That was so bloody typical.

John sipped his plastic cup of cheap Merlot. In glancing out the windows he observed a man, two seats to his left, whom he recognized from an earlier panel on acute medicine. He seemed to be engaged in much the same pastime as John, watching the crowd and avoiding conversation. In another twenty years, John reflected sourly, that would be him. The perennial, lonely bachelor, adrift in the limbo of pre-retirement: reaching the end of his career and yet unwilling to toss in the towel; no one at home and nothing to look forward to; an aging Nestor, excluded from the aspirations reserved for youth. Fantastic. This banquet had been a real pick-me-up.

John wanted to leave. He was exhausted, and he was also bored. It was as though these people existed on another planet, and John was struck with the thought not unusual to him, that he didn't belong here. He watched them mingle and chat, make eyes at each other and argue, laugh, demure. It was all so boring. Dull. Predictable. John's chest constricted and he didn't know whether to laugh or scream.

So, on what planet did he belong, then? Not on Sherlock's certainly. He was a planet unto himself, and a hostile one at that. If that were so, then John, if anything, was a moon, like a satellite or something. In terms of self worth, that was actually quite pathetic. It seemed to be a reoccurring theme in John's life. Really, who honestly got abducted by serial killers? It was humiliating. It was really something he could have happily never considered, ever again, for the rest of his miserable, lonely, satellite life.

For awhile John watched two people near the table of ravished hors d'oeuvres. The woman was slightly older, with a pleasant demeanor. Her hair had once been blonder than it was, and only because he was looking did John observe the pale narrow mark where her wedding band had been. Her jewelry was plain, but of a high calibre, and she had her back to the table, hips canted towards her companion.

If John wanted to be perfectly honest with himself (which he didn't, he ruefully conceded), the thought of leaving Sherlock now sickened him slightly. Supposing he got fed up and went back into medicine full time, where would that put him?

The man speaking with the older woman was roughly thirty years old, gawkishly tall, and obviously inexperienced with women. His blue jacket was wide in the shoulders, large to accommodate his long arms, and he was talking too much about all the wrong things, emboldened by the woman's attentions. Her mind was a long way from medicine tonight, and if he would just shut up, the man might even get lucky. John, on the other hand, hadn't gotten lucky in quite some time, not with Sherlock popping in on his dates and dragging him off to fight crime. John could never say no, and this fact had now put him below par with everybody here. He actually had lower odds of getting laid than Awkward McBlue-Suit. John Watson, setting new standards of pathetic all over the globe. He drained his cup of wine, and it tasted terrible.

For all that Sherlock was infuriating, John had to admit that he hadn't actually been out of line the other day; not any more than usual. It was being the object of his morbid fascination that had put John off, having the layers slowly peeled back from everything he had wished to conceal, his personal horrors laid out and examined. He refused to address the implications against his sanity that he would rather be there, flayed by Sherlock's exacting nature, than here.

John wasn't imaginative, and it was a result of this that others mistook him for brave, even the great Sherlock Holmes. John couldn't imagine all the horrific ways in which his escape could have failed: that was what had enabled him to do it. But later, huddled blindly in the crook of a fallen tree, each harrowing minute had compounded the odds in his mind that he would be discovered. At that time every bird call, every snapping stick, had been the sounds of pursuit, and John had entertained not the possibilities, but the single certainty that he would be killed, that he would be brutally brought to heel and slaughtered.

These thoughts didn't do him any good now, so he corralled them and put them away. Wasn't the case more important than John's petty hang ups?

Someone cut into John's line of vision, setting another cup of red wine before him, and one to the gentleman at John's left. John recognized the newcomer as another one of the guest speakers. Though John had attended his lecture, he couldn't now remember what it had been about.

"Don't you two make a miserable pair," the man said, lowering himself into the seat diagonally between John and the other solitary man. He had his own glass of white wine, and had probably had a few, if he was striking conversations with complete strangers by way of criticism. He was somewhat tall, grey; a full but well maintained beard. Married, John noted, as that seemed to be a singular preoccupation of the evening. Cartwright, John thought the name was. He could check the program later, but knew he wouldn't. John raised his wine in a vague gesture of salute.

"I have just extracted myself," the man began, "from a most insipid discussion on _ethics._ These young doctors think they invented controversy." He in turn raised his glass to the third doctor. "We're well quit of it, Harrington," and he shook his head. "Youth."

John nodded in his best impression of affability. He wasn't sure where he fit into this discussion. The third doctor, Harrington, nodded as well and sipped his wine. Their end of the table lapsed into awkward silence. John shifted and eyed the door. It was one thing to silently lament one's isolation, but this Cartwright fellow had had the effect of bringing it into excruciating focus.

"Have you heard about the Monroe murders?" the man began again suddenly. "Anthrax!"

John had in fact heard about the Monroe murders, aside from it having been in the news all week. A Kensington family had, over the course of the last year, one by one succumbed to a flu-like illness. Upon reading of the recent affliction of the youngest daughter, Sherlock had offhandedly listed the symptoms and asked John, "If this were deliberate, what would it be?" "Anthrax, probably," John had said. It was so seldom encountered in England that it could have hardly been the initial diagnosis, unless the doctor lived with a consulting detective whose thoughts were constantly mired in murder.

"Shouldn't have missed that," Cartwright continued. "Puts Dr. Holloway in a tight spot, to have done. And with a such a prominent family."

Well, it seemed everyone was a detective once the crime had already been revealed. John hastened to finish his wine. The evening had been bad enough, and Cartwright was setting his teeth on edge.

"Dull," Sherlock had said, when the Monroe case had played on the news. He had texted Lestrade with his suspicions against the Monroe's housekeeper, and the entire debacle had been brought to a head in under twenty-four hours. It was a bit dull, John had conceded. Tragic, yes, and reprehensible, but Sherlock had seen through it in a single news article; he hadn't even left the chair. And in doing so, he had saved lives, not that he appreciated that bit. That's what John was for, he surmised, to recognize its moral value. Like Jiminy Cricket. For Christ's sake. John finished the rest of his wine before he could make anymore disparaging observations about himself. Dr. Harrington was posing the question of where the housekeeper could have even procured anthrax, but anyone could get anything; anthrax, ether, arsenic; if they had a mind to, as John since joining Sherlock had been made increasingly aware.

John rose. "Gentlemen," he said, and nodded, determined to escape by tomorrow's first train to London. He would rather play satellite to something truly magnificent than lose himself amidst this banality. The two men watched him go, eyes dulled by drink and what John imagined to be despair. Buoyed by this call to action, John left the conference a happier man than the one who had arrived. All things considered, that didn't say much, but it was something.

 

  
This feeling lasted until about noon the next day, when, fifty yards up the street, John heard the caterwauling of Sherlock on his violin. He was actually quite an accomplished violinist, but he drifted in and out of sinuous melodies, interspersed them with the most horrible sounds, as though the catgut had been strung and tuned with the animals still attached to their viscera. His hand on the handle of 221, John closed his eyes, either to steel himself or to enact a retreat, he hadn't yet decided. Another dissonant howl arose from the first storey, and John plunged in, tromping heavily up the steps.

The violin ceased immediately, and when John entered the flat, it was nowhere to be seen. The fact of the matter was it could have been anywhere, because the flat was in an absolute state. It reeked of stale cigarettes. Newspapers, documents, bits of coloured string were strewn about everywhere, covering every surface from floor to table, table to wall. Sherlock bounded over a stack of files, hands poised in the air, head tilted conspiratorially.

"John," he said. "Come." He grabbed John's elbow and steered him into the sitting room, to the large map of Greater London he had erected above the mantle. It was dotted with thumb tacks. "Look."

John had nearly had time to hang his jacket, but he instead had to drape it over one arm. He looked. The tacks were yellow, closer to Central London, and red as they radiated out into the rural areas. There was one green tack at on Coppice Row, out in Theydon Bois. That one must be him. John noted the highlighted route connecting it to his yellow tack in North Finchley.

"Found a few more, then," John said. There were several more red tacks than could have been placed on Friday, though not quite as many to match the yellows. "Wasn't on the news."

"Of course it wasn't on the news. I hushed it up," Sherlock said, somewhat breathlessly. His eyes glittered as he surveyed his work. "If the killer realizes we're onto him, he'll go to ground."

John considered this. "That would be good, though. Wouldn't it?"

"No, it wouldn't be good John, obviously!"

"I just meant he wouldn't kill any-"

"I know what you _meant._ " Sherlock turned away abruptly and paced a carefully erratic route through the papers on the floor. He was thrumming with nervous energy, and he sawed one thumbnail into the pad of his forefinger. "We don't have enough evidence."

"So," John said dubiously, an edge creeping into his tone, "he has to kill someone else before you can catch him?"

Sherlock didn't answer, but spun around and returned to the map. He gestured to the several pairs of red tacks. "In these areas there is or has been a derelict structure suitable for his method of strangling victims. Each is within a forty minute drive from the point of abduction. The original bodies were found here - " he pointed to the southernmost tacks - "and you were up here. I was able to deduce these other two areas as likely locations for him to dispose of the bodies." John glanced closer at the map. There was another tack, a blue one, north of Theydon Bois.

"It hasn't turned up anything yet, but I'm convinced it's only a matter of time." Sherlock then rested his finger on John's green tack. There was a red one there, within an inch of his. "The remnants of the structure you described were discovered, but it collapsed years ago. We've discovered the body of what we presume to be his first victim, but of course you were the last he would have brought there. You weren't too far from the road, really. Pity. You could have gotten to the police much sooner. And I was correct in surmising the first murder to have been considerably more brutal."

"Right. Good," John said. He decided to straighten up the flat a bit.

"Sevoflurane wouldn't have produced such a notable odor as other ether anesthetics. Rapid onset, though it would have worn off in five minutes. That might account for the blow you sustained to the back of the head."

"Have you taken up smoking?" John asked. A small saucer on the table protruded cigarettes from every inch of its surface, taking on the appearance of a tar-stained sea urchin.

"Mrs. Hudson exercised her executive privilege as landlady, and forced me to quit. If he found it necessary to concuss his second victim, it's probable he was unfamiliar with the short term effects of inhalational anesthetics. Led astray, no doubt, by the negligent inaccuracies of the media. Are you sure you don't remember how that happened?"

"I'm sure," John said shortly. He cleared the cigarette creature into the trash.

"No," Sherlock mused. "You wouldn't if you were just coming out of it. _Facts!_ " he bellowed, and grabbed his hair. "I need facts, John!"

The kitchen seemed the most innocuous place to begin cleaning. There were no ongoing chemical experiments, though there were what looked to be several culinary disasters. As long as John kept his hands in motion he could ignore the tremor that had been steadily returning since Friday. Luckily, there was a mountain of dishes to be done, and if he made enough noise washing them, he couldn't hear Sherlock's yammering at all. Viewed in this light, it was quite fortunate that his flatmate had no domestic inclinations whatsoever.

"- in this area," Sherlock was saying. John turned the tap on full. It was more water than he needed strictly to clean the dishes, but on the other hand he had thus far maintained the resolution he had made on the train. He was calm. He was not yet throttling Sherlock. It was his problem, John reminded himself. Sherlock was just being his psychopath self.

"John," Sherlock called, had been calling for some time.

That wasn't right. John's stomach soured. Sherlock wasn't a psychopath, and in fact John was always rather defensive when Lestrade's staff insisted he was. John was ashamed to have entertained the thought, even in spite. It wasn't fair to turn on him just because he was inconsiderate, insensitive, arrogant, slovenly -

"John!" Sherlock said. He was standing right next to him. "Are you listening?"

"Nope."

For a moment, this had the unusual effect of silencing the incorrigible detective. Then he said sullenly, "It does concern you, after all. One would think you'd show a little more interest."

John shut off the water and dried his hands on a towel. "A little more interest." He looked at Sherlock squarely, weighing his words. "All of those bodies that you have so cleverly uncovered - you are aware that any one of them could have been me, right?"

Sherlock met John's glare, expression blank as alabaster. John threaded the towel through a cabinet handle to dry. "It would be my mangled skeleton you'd be pouring over in the lab, too thrilled to either eat or sleep, so you'll forgive me if I'm not enamoured with the idea of..of examining all the ways in which this could have happened."

Sherlock wrenched backwards, his countenance blackening. "That's irrelevant, John -"

"It's not irrelevant!"

"No, it is, because it didn't happen. Possibilities can exist only in the future. History is comprised soley of facts, and the facts - "

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Sherlock,"

Sherlock's face screwed up in a curious hybrid of disdain, confusion, and not a little disappointment. "How can it be that you are so unflappable until now, that you can suffer yourself to be abducted by smugglers, by Moriarty, be gift wrapped in Semtex -"

"Because I wasn't _alone,_ Sherlock! You - No." John held up his hands in surrender. "This was a mistake." He retreated to the hall and slipped into his jacket. "I'm just going to let you handle this, because I'm not -"

"No!" Sherlock lunged after him, and with one broad, long fingered hand he slammed closed the door John had begun to pull open. He stared at John intensely, the taught silence extending far beyond the normal limit.

"I've upset you," he finally said. "I'm sorry."

Though tempted to fold in confusion, John kept his expression stoney. Sherlock's gaze flickered over his face, searching. "I'm sorry," he said again, quietly. John wavered. This wasn't the game Sherlock played with strangers, the false normality he extended when he wanted something from them. His eyes were rimmed thick with exhaustion. With a weary sigh, John gave in. His eye caught on Sherlock's wrist, exposed where he had his hand clapped to the door. John snatched it and pushed back the sleeve.

"How many of these have you got on?" he demanded. Sherlock's entire forearm was plastered in nicotene patches. John began tearing them off. "You'll kill yourself!"

Sherlock watched him, mildly. "Those are empty," he said, wrist limp in John's grip. "In fact, I think they may have been recharging." He tried to pull away when John reached the new patches, but John had them off, wadded up, and discarded in a moment. Sherlock rubbed his arm.

"I _am_ going out," John said. "We need food. You need to eat, so don't give me a hard time, please."

Sherlock stood back and allowed him to pass. His shirtsleeve still up, he looked as though he'd been attacked by an octopus.

 

  
John picked up some soup and a couple of sandwiches at the corner deli. He might be able to coax Sherlock into eating the soup, but the sandwiches were a long shot. As he returned he saw Sherlock standing outside, looking up the street for a cab. He was nearly dancing with anticipation and he whirled about when John called his name.

"John!" he cried, and faltered, the eagerness in his thin face at war with an unusual hesitancy. He rocked as if to step forward, but remained where he was. "You'll come, won't you? I've just spoken with Lestrade."

John smiled wryly. "Of course."

Immediately the hesitancy was gone, replaced with the frenetic genius that defined Sherlock Holmes. "Good." He said, and returned a breathless almost smile. Turning away he said, almost too softly for John to hear, "I am lost without my Boswell."


	4. Chapter 4

John was keenly aware that they were excavating a murder victim a mere stone's throw from some one's yard; he could hear children squealing over the baritone boom of what he assumed to be their father. Sherlock was crouched low over the shallow grave, examining the remains of Charlie Bradford, who had disappeared two years ago, and who's skull, along with his left clavicle and several vertebrae, had been viciously bashed in. Sherlock was enthralled, naturally.

"Doesn't it bother you?" Donovan had asked, though not unkindly.

"Yes," John said. In order to maintain his composure today he had carefully and with bullheaded determination cordoned off any of the feelings which had threatened to overwhelm him all weekend. In any case, he noted, when he had been at Bart's he had been no different from Sherlock, really. John and everyone he knew had coveted medical anomalies the way Sherlock coveted curious crimes, so it was hypocritical to judge him for it. John congratulated himself on this newly unearthed equanimity.

Sherlock's weekend had been spent largely combing the wooded areas of Greater London on Google Maps, he'd said. After determining which of them best suited the killer's MO, he had investigated further on foot. Out near Bell Common he had discovered an abandoned out-building that had featured the tell tale stress marks on the wooden cross beam, as though some heavy object had been suspended there by a coarse, low grade rope. Today, the sixth body had been discovered roughly one hundred yards from this structure.

Today, for the first and probably only time, Donovan was more vocal in her displeasure with John's presence than Sherlock's. Her concern was misplaced, because John was preoccupied with Sherlock's health at the moment. As expected, he had managed only a few mouthfuls of soup before lapsing into nervous silence, blue eyes wide and staring intently into something no one else could see. John wished he had some frame of reference for a healthy looking Sherlock, cured of the anemic pallor, so he could tell if he looked sick today. John suspected he did.

Sherlock rose abruptly and turned a tight circle where he stood, nose to the air as though scenting out clues. He made a beeline for John and hustled him to the tree line, and in a moment they were striding across some one's backyard, up the porch steps, and Sherlock was shoving something into John's hands - Lestrade's badge and I.D. - and saying, "Deal with this." John turned and faced a man who had bounded after them, the presumed owner of the house. His stunned children were immobilized on the swings as their father dealt with the two strange men who had so audaciously intruded upon his private property. John flicked open the badge. "Scotland Yard," he said.

The man stuttered to a halt. There was a muffled shriek when Sherlock encountered a woman inside, and John stared steadily at the man, internally cursing his flatmate and fumbling for a way to make what they were doing sound remotely legal.

"There's been a murder," he explained. "We have reason to believe that...this house contains critical evidence." That sounded good.

"Have you got a warrant?" the man demanded.

"No." He wasn't actually with Scotland Yard, either, he didn't say. This was seven different types of illegal. John flipped the badge closed and followed Sherlock inside. He was in the dining room, a large, airy space with hardwood floors, a central carpet, and a large mahogany dining table. Quite nice, actually. Sherlock briskly paced the perimeter, examined the base boards and window sills.

"What the fuck is going on?" The man had followed John into the house. He was tall and thin, going a bit bald, though he couldn't have been much past thirty. His wife seemed to have taken off. In the yard, probably, with the kids. "I haven't killed anyone."

"The floors are new in this room only," Sherlock said. "Why?"

"Look," John said. "We know you haven't killed anyone. You're not under, um, suspicion, or anything like that, but it's vitally important that you cooperate. There are lives at stake." Which was kind of true, probably. John had achieved a kind of distant, floaty feeling about the whole thing. The man looked between John and Sherlock.

"Can I get your badge number?"

"No time! Tell me about the floor." Sherlock was craning his neck now to inspect the ceiling, spinning to catch various angles.

"Of course," John said, and pulled put Lestrade's badge again. He kept up his game of confidence while the man retrieved a pen and copied down the number. As long as he didn't closely examine the photo, John and Lestrade looked passingly similar. At this point Sherlock had climbed onto the table and was running his fingers over a certain spot on the ceiling.

"What was here when you bought the house?"

Placated slightly but still confused, the man answered, "A hook. For a chandelier, I imagine. How did you - "

"Far too large for a chandelier hook. It was probably industrial, steel. That's why you took it down. Was it screwed in fully?"

"N - no. How - what?"

Sherlock jumped down from the table. "The floor is new," he repeated.

"We had to put it in when we bought the place - "

"When? Why?"

"Almost two years ago. Some vandals got in and poured paints and solvent on it. It was ruined."

Sherlock's brow wrinkled. "Solvent." He looked about the room again. "These things were stored in the house, prior to the sale."

"I don't know - yes, actually. They were in the hall closet."

"Good. Thank you." Sherlock swept out of the room, and with a nod to the poor gentleman, John followed.

He had to jog to catch up with Sherlock, who looked to be heading straight for the cab they had left waiting. "So?" he said, when he had come abreast. "What was all that? Just so I know when Lestrade arrests me tomorrow."

Sherlock was panting lightly and a thin sheen of perspiration had broken out across his brow and upper lip. He swallowed thickly. "It was too far," he breathed, stuttered and began again. "The body was too far from the shack. That house was empty two years ago. New paint, new mailbox, new parents." He swallowed again.

"Are you alright?"

Sherlock took a shallow breath. "It was unexpected. The boy woke up while the killer was preparing the hook. He hadn't secured him to anything, the struggle was violent, the boy would have bled a great deal. He disposed of the body quickly, hence the shallow grave, the proximity to the house. He returned to cover up the blood. He used what he could find in the house. It was unplanned, careless. Why was he careless?" He asked this of himself, and lapsed into a silence that wouldn't be broken for most of the cab ride back to London, which Sherlock had better be billing to Scotland Yard; the fare was astronomical.

In the cab Sherlock pulled his feet up on the seat, curled in towards his knees and stared fixedly at nothing. Twenty minutes later, when he had begun to tremble slightly, John placed a hand on his clammy forehead and took his pulse at the wrist. It was light and quick, skimming through his veins, and John's stomach turned over. At the flat he had only checked the one arm for patches. He pulled up Sherlock's other sleeve and found two more on the smooth skin at the crook of his elbow. John cursed feebly and tore them off. That made eight, altogether.

"Are you wearing any more of these? Sherlock?"

Sherlock didn't answer. His nostrils dilated as he sucked in quick breaths through his nose.

"I said, are you wearing any more of these? Answer me!"

Sherlock twitched his head in an approximation of no. John felt himself beginning to panic. "We have to get you to a hospital." He leaned forward to tell the driver, but Sherlock superseded him with a firm denial.

"It's fine," he added.

"No, it's not fine! It is so fucking far from fine, Sherlock." John's voice choked off. He turned away and tried to steady himself, but was hit instead with a flood of images, Charlie Bradford, fifteen years old, his cooling body curled beneath the earth. Himself, running blindly into the forest, slipping, cracking his head against a rock. He saw flashes of memories, men in Afghanistan who'd had their jaws blown off, their muscles shredded from their bones, their skulls caved in in explosions; all of them dead, bled out into the ground miles from home, miles away from anyone who loved them.

"Okay," John said. His eyes were clenched tightly shut and he forced himself to open them. "Okay." Until they reached London, there was nothing to be done. Afghanistan was behind him. Theydon Bois was behind him. Charlie Bradford, Jackson Long, those boys were dead already. John reached again for Sherlock's wrist, seeking out his pulse once more. There it was, skittering beneath the skin. Everything else was insignificant.

　

Upon pulling up outside 221, Sherlock handed John his card, leaped from the cab, blanched, swooned, and caught himself, then hurried up to the flat while John was still waiting for the payment to process. When John finally caught up with him he was already whipping about the sitting room, two fingers to each temple, muttering breathlessly to himself, " _think, think!_ " John stood in the doorway at an utter loss. He wanted to cry. Instead he trudged up to his bedroom and dug out a small bottle of prescription pills from his nightstand. They still had a few months left on them; after moving into 221B, he had never bothered to renew his prescription. In the kitchen he crushed one into a glass of milk, then stood watching Sherlock in all his frenzy.

"His seventh victim, including John. Why did that happen? He knew how long he had. He _wanted_ it to happen." He stopped in front of the map, fingers steepled before his lips. "He beat the first, the seventh, John - "

"He didn't hit me," John said. Sherlock jerked around to face him, and he continued cautiously, prodding the edges of the faint memory which had arisen in the cab. He forgot for the moment the task he had set himself. "I slipped. When I ran. I slid and cracked my head on a rock. I threw up. I don't know why I didn't remember until now. Is that important?"

Sherlock blinked at him, hard. Swaying a bit, he turned back to the map, and John remembered about his milk. He threaded through the mess on the floor and stood beside Sherlock, whose breaths were still shallow and irregular. He shouldn't have said anything about the sudden recollection, not today. He had spoken before realizing the consequence.

"Drink this," John told him, and was ignored. "Sherlock, I'm your doctor. You need to get something into your stomach, alright? I'm not making you eat actual food, so please just drink the milk." Sherlock snatched it from him and downed it in a matter of seconds. He handed the glass back to John without speaking, and John slowly returned to the kitchen.

"If he didn't hit you, then he kept you unconscious chemically. You would have awoken in the car, you would remember, unless he did know how quickly it would wear off, and he dosed you again. He was driving. He was...driving. In the car." Sherlock wiped his mouth on the back of his shaking hand and stared at the floor. John watched him from the kitchen. It was ten minutes of increasingly meandering tangents before Sherlock collapsed against the table, struggling weakly to support himself. "Oh, you _bastard,_ " he hissed. John caught him under the arms and towed him to the couch, arranging his long limbs to fit there comfortably. In a moment he was completely unconscious.

"I'm sorry," John murmured, and stroked his hair. He sat down in the hollow formed between Sherlock's stomach and knees, and then he did cry, crouched tightly forward, his knuckles pressed against his teeth because he was in love and it _hurt_.

The day was waning. A light cloud cover had cast the city into premature twilight, and 221B grew steadily darker. Still John sat nestled against Sherlock, and when he had brought himself under control, he drew his friend's wrist into his lap, checking again for the pulse. It had leveled out considerably since the cab, and John wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. He fetched the spare blanket and draped it over Sherlock, and as an afterthought, tugged off his shoes as well. He would hopefully sleep at least until tomorrow.

John glanced at the ruin Sherlock had wrought of the flat, then poured a glass of milk for himself. He felt weak and empty, like a rag that'd had all the water wrung out. He retreated to the hall, settled down on the stairs to his room, and called his sister. 　

He tried to play it off, at first, asking Harry about her life as though they had spoken at any point in the last six months. Finally she said, "What is it, John?" and he balked.

"Do you remember," he began, and breathed. "Do you remember the time when...um, when I was abducted?"

Harry was silent for a long time. "Yes."

John groped for words. He wasn't sure why he had actually called, now that it was too late.

"John," Harry prompted.

"Right, well, it turns out that that was a serial killer, and a lot of bodies have turned up recently, from him, and I was wondering if perhaps I said anything that you can recall that may have been important that I don't remember, because...um...I don't seem to remember anything useful, and they haven't caught him yet, so I thought perhaps I said something back then...that you recall. That might be useful."

Another long silence descended over the line. John was folded onto the second step, elbows tucked against his body and his forehead brushing the wall.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly. He felt like a child. "I know that was a long time ago - "

"I was thinking," Harry said. John heard the chink of ice in the glass as it was raised close to the phone. "I can't really remember too much about that, John."

"Right." John nodded dumbly. "Sorry."

"You were...you acted like you had a hangover. Didn't say much. You had a headache. You also had about fifteen stitches in the back of your head, so no surprise there."

"Was there anything unusual, though? Like, you thought was odd."

Harry paused for another drink. What was it, four on a Sunday? "You followed me around a lot."

John felt the tightness return to his throat. "Sorry."

"What the fuck are you sorry about? You've got nothing to be sorry for."

When he was sixteen, after all the questions, after the photographs, examinations, and reports, he had latched onto Harry, who would either smoke in silence or talk about the upcoming football championships, never about what had happened. She had been nineteen at the time and living at home, working part time at the local pharmacy. When their parents announced their intention to move to Manchester, Harry had refused to come. They hadn't really spoken after that.

"You said he's been killing people this whole time? How many?"

"They've found six so far."

"Well what about that detective bloke you've shacked up with, hasn't he done anything?"

"We're working on it."

"Christ. Jesus fucking Christ, Johnny." When she spoke again her voice was tremulous. "You acted like you were hungover, so I pretended that's all it was. I was a real bastard, John, I'm sorry."

It was almost entirely dark in the hall now. John rested his head against his knees. "You don't have to be sorry. I did mess up your life a bit."

"Don't you fucking apologise to _me,_ John. That's mental." Clink clink, the ice on the glass. John could tell she was crying - a first in the thirty-six years he'd known her. There was a restive pause while she collected herself. "You went off onions afterwards. I remember that."

"What?"

"I remember because it irritated the life out of me. You used to eat them."

 _Onions._ He ate them now, though he didn't go out of his way to use them if he cooked. He vaguely recalled not liking them when he was younger, but it wasn't associated with anything in his mind. That was strange, it was the sort of thing Sherlock would want to know when he woke up.

"Anything else?" he asked.

"No. I'll call if I remember something. And you didn't mess up my life, alright?"

"Yeah. Okay."

"I mean it, John. I was being selfish. I should have come with you to Manchester. I'm sorry."

John sighed. "It was a long time ago, Harry."

"It doesn't matter. I was a bitch, I still am. I was really angry with you. And it wasn't your fault. I was really angry." She was crying again. That at nineteen Harry had opted to stay behind should have come as no surprise: she'd never gotten on with their parents. But John had been terrified. He'd needed her. He'd looked up to her for a long time. God, that was so long ago. "And this detective, he's good, yeah?"

"Yeah. Really good. The best."

"If I remember something I'll ring you. Have you talked to Mum?"

"No."

"Do you intend to?"

John was silent.

"I'll ask if she remembers anything, alright?"

"Okay. Yeah, thanks, Harry. That would be great, actually." John had begun to work a fingernail into the seam of the phone casing. His bum was sore from sitting on the wooden step. "I've got to get going," he said.

"Alright."

When he had hung up the phone, John returned the sofa. He leaned back against Sherlock and checked his pulse one more time, then held onto the long, cool hand because Sherlock was unconscious and couldn't protest. Tomorrow he would wake up, pick up where he'd left off: the same whirlwind of nervous energy. He would be furious, too, John knew. He buried his fingers in the curls at the nape of Sherlock's neck. They were damp, and John fanned them out against the cushion. For a moment he thought he would cry again out of sheer exhaustion, but he didn't. He looked up at the ceiling; pretended that Sherlock was asleep instead of unconscious, that what John was doing was fine, because he needed it to be, just for right now.


	5. Chapter 5

When he awoke, for a few confused seconds Sherlock suffered the delusion that he had been asleep a mere moment; the natural light filtering into the flat hadn't changed. As he struggled to sit up, the blood in his brain pulsed vindictively against its confines, blinding him briefly before settling into a persistent throb. Sherlock pressed both hands over his eyes and then noticed that no, the light _had_ changed. It was earlier by at least an hour.

Sherlock began the arduous task of levering himself upright. His mouth had taken on an acrid, tacky quality, and by the time he had made it to the toilet he thought he would vomit. He leaned over the seat for nearly five minutes, salivating from the back of his throat, until the feeling slowly dissipated. He straightened, then brushed his teeth. He returned to the kitchen, and noticed that it was very clean. He had been asleep for twenty-three hours. Oh, and also, John had _drugged_ him.

On top of the nicotine, whatever John had used wouldn't have taken long to reach his bloodstream. Diazepam, probably. That alone wouldn't have knocked him out for twenty three hours, or leave him feeling as though he'd been mauled repeatedly by Satan's own chariot. The eighth patch had perhaps been in excess.

Sherlock made his way to the table, where there was a plate of stone cold french toast. He slid into a chair, stared absently for a moment, then rallied his energy and retrieved the note John had left him. John the Traitor.

 _Eat this,_ it read. What, eat the note, John, really?

 _I'm sort of sorry I drugged you, but not really, and I hope you're feeling better. I spoke with Harry last night. She said that after_ (here something was scratched out,) _the incident at Theydon Bois, that I went off onions. I don't know that means, but it's the sort of thing you usually like to know. -J_

Well, that was stupid. Children went off various foods all the time. Sherlock hadn't eaten much more than bread prior to University. He set the note back, anchoring one corner beneath the plate of french toast. He picked at a bit of crust, but then the thought of consuming it made him nauseous again. He closed his eyes.

He was being an idiot. This wasn't a three patch problem, or an eight patch, to be solved in one long string of concerted effort over the course of four days. All facts considered, it wasn't even particularly interesting. The man hadn't yet been caught only because he allowed the scent to cool sometimes several years before killing again. There were exceptions, of course, but rarely more than one in a year, sometimes none for as long as five. There was nothing singular, nothing fascinatingly unique, except that he had tried to kill John.

Sherlock leaned his head forward, into his hands. John had seemed to suffer some sort of traumatic flashback yesterday in the cab. The case was affecting him badly, that much was obvious. In general, John was straightforward and reliable, and Sherlock didn't like the distant, flat, unreadable look that prevailed lately. He didn't like the way John had flinched into the corner of the cab in a paralysis of stifled horror. And he didn't like that he didn't know why he didn't like it. He had never before had to deduce his own motives.

John was his friend. It was natural that Sherlock should experience residual distress on his behalf. More importantly, it would compromise John's effectiveness should Sherlock require his assistance, as he often did. But "residual distress" didn't explain the anxiety which had kept him in a flurry of half-directionless activity for eighty some-odd hours, until John had had to drug him to get him to stop. Sherlock was properly livid about that by the way. He would express it as soon as he regained his fine motor skills, which seemed slow to resurface from their involuntary furlough.

Sherlock decided to have a shower. He stood under the harsh, steaming spray, gathering the thoughts which in the last twenty-three hours had fled in diaspora. His skin had taken on the curious quality of feeling somewhat numb, yet hypersensitive: he couldn't quite detect the temperature of the water, but he was acutely aware of each individual point of impact, as though he were being pelted with rock salt rather than water. He shut it off and stepped out of the shower. He shaved, then brushed his teeth again, scouring his tongue and the sides of his mouth.

Once he had gotten dressed, he wandered about the flat in search of his shoes. They were lined up, heels out, at the foot of the couch, and Sherlock was halfway to retrieving them when he was arrested by the realization that John had removed them while he slept. There was an inexplicable tenderness in the gesture, and Sherlock sat down, bewildered, with a prickling tension in the back of his throat. With some difficulty he ushered this thought out of his mind and finished putting on his shoes.

For awhile, Sherlock perused the information he had tacked above the mantle, and for a longer while he stared aimlessly at the desiccating toast on the table. He would have played a bit on his violin if the blood vessels in his brain hadn't been threatening mutiny. His stomach was clenching with hunger, but the thought of eating anything made it clench in revulsion, and there was, on top of everything, that godawful taste in his mouth that would not desist. Sherlock's eyes snapped open.

"Oh," he said. _Oh!_ "Of course." All ailments forgotten, he dashed into the hall and threw on his blazer, picking his phone from his pocket as he opened the door.

"Sherlock?" John answered, as Sherlock rushed down the steps, careening against the wall in his haste.

"Onions, John!" he said. "Meet me at Scotland Yard immediately."

 

John was there by the time Sherlock arrived, the clinic being closer than the flat. Sherlock had called ahead to request a photo compilation of suspects, blond, blue-eyed men between fifty and sixty years old, employed within the Greater London area, and most importantly - "He's a doctor," Sherlock said. John looked at him blankly.

"And how do you know that?"

"Because of the onions, obviously."

"What onions," Lestrade piped in. It would be awhile before his team had gathered the list of suspects, and for the time they were camped rather tensely in his office.

"John doesn't like onions," Sherlock explained, then, seeing that he would have to go further, he rolled his eyes. It was purely theatrics. Aside from having a case, and solving a case, Sherlock loved nothing more than to recapitulate the finer points of his deductions. As long as John were present.

"We know from John's report that he was anesthetized prior to his abduction. When he was found the following day, he reported feeling nauseous, a natural side effect not only of the ordeal, but of having been drugged for the thirty minute drive to Theydon Bois. As John's sister so helpfully recalled, his taste for onions suffered a sharp decline subsequent to this event, and having extensively studied the effects of most drugs on the human body, I am aware that sodium thiopental will often generate what has been described as a garlic or rotten onion aftertaste. Its use has generally been replaced with propofol, but in 1990 it would have been the staple anesthetic in any hospital, with limited recreational availability or abuse due to lack of demand, on account of the side effects, which John experienced in the form of nausea and the lingering onion flavour." Sherlock began to pace the confines of the office. Oh, it was brilliant. He loved being him.

"While I maintain that John was initially anesthetized with an inhalational agent, that doesn't account for the extended period of time he was rendered unconscious. The killer drove some distance and then administered a solution containing the second drug, thiopental, intravenously. If administered incorrectly, this drug will cause severe necrosis in the tissue surrounding the injection. As John exhibited no such symptoms, it must have been injected flawlessly into the vein. This man had the unconscious body of an abducted child in the passenger seat of his car. Under those circumstances, only a _doctor_ would have been so habitually careful with someone he intended to kill shortly afterwards."

Lestrade eyed him dubiously. "And you got all that," he said, "because John doesn't like onions."

Lestrade was an idiot. But John was smiling that awed, addictive little sliver of a half-smile, and Sherlock felt the heat jump suddenly to his face.

"Once the list has been compiled it's a simple matter of identifying the killer, and you can make your arrest." Sherlock turned and stared staunchly out the window to the main office.

 

In an hour, John was seated before a large computer monitor scrolling through the images of suspects. There were well over fifty hospitals in Greater London, so the list was quite extensive. Sherlock leaned back against the desk, scrutinizing John's expression. So much as a tick and Sherlock would raise his eyes to Lestrade, who would jot down the name and send it off with one of his lackeys to rustle up an older picture. John hunched further forward, his nose drawing closer and closer to the screen until he abruptly leaned back with a groan, scouring his face with his hands.

"Get him some water," Sherlock said, and Lestrade nodded to an underling.

"Make it a scotch," John muttered.

When someone arrived with a bottle of water, he took a long pull, breathed deeply, and resumed his scroll. It was nearing six when, for the first time, he hesitated notably and leaned forward. Sherlock stood up and crowded him at the monitor.

"No," John said. "It's just someone I recognize from the...from the conference." He trailed off.

"Prioritize Alan Cartwright," Sherlock demanded, straightening up. One of Lestrade's minions leapt to do his bidding. Sherlock kept a narrow gaze on John, and ten minutes later the minion returned with the color print out of the man at thirty-five, sandy hair, beardless, and bright blue eyes. John looked at it for a long time before nodding and clearing his throat. "Um, yes. Yes, that's him."

The office burst into a flurry of activity, at the center of which John sat in an emotionless nadir. Sergeant Donovan hurriedly set a paper cup before him, and was gone. The cup contained Scotch. Glenfiddich, if Sherlock wasn't mistaken, which he wasn't. In a moment, the entire office had nearly cleared, aside from those running paperwork.

Sherlock slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned back on the desk, watching his flatmate stare vacantly forward, his face that blank and inscrutable mask.

"Alright?" Sherlock finally asked. John seemed to shake himself briskly and blinked several times.

"No, I...yes, I mean. I, um...met him, that was all. At the conference. I actually sat. At a table with him." John's voice had gone a bit breezy, and Sherlock picked up the scotch and thrust it at him. John took it, saw what it was, and laughed. "Cheers," he said, but didn't drink. A Scotland Yard minion scurried through the office. A door closed somewhere.

"You think I would have noticed, right? Fuck. Fuck, I didn't even think."

"Yes, well. That's why you have me."

John cracked a limited smile. He stood up and downed the cup of scotch. "Let's get out of here, then."

 

 

"It's all circumstantial, though, isn't it?" They were on their way to _Monsoon_ for dinner. There was something of a bite to the air now that the sun had dropped below the skyline. "I mean, it's more like my word against his, we can't prove anything."

"Honestly, John, what do you take me for?" Sherlock replied. "Something will turn up."

"Oh, that's very reassuring."

"It should be."

"It's not."

"In any event, your testimony is more than enough to hold him for now. The accusation is rather grave."

"Yeah, I suppose." John sighed, then laughed without humor. "Should have just killed him when I had the chance."

"Would have saved time."

John laughed again, more quietly. Sherlock assessed him from the corner of his eye. Abruptly, he said, "You drugged me."

John glanced at him, caught his gaze and held it. To Sherlock's surprise, there was quite a bit of heat in his expression. "I did," he confirmed. "And I will if I have to. Don't ever scare me like that again, Sherlock."

Mildly affronted, Sherlock drew back. Before he could retort, however, John continued, vehemence replaced with weary exasperation. "It's enough with the thieves, and the smugglers, and the...the criminal underworld, without you doing yourself in, alright?" John caught his gaze once more, this time in something curiously akin to supplication. For some reason Sherlock began to feel anxious. His mouth had gone dry, and guardedly, he looked away. The hangover he had placed on hold returned fiercely and threatened to dominate him. They walked the rest of the way to the restaurant in silence.

 

They finished a subdued meal some time before seven. John was clearly exhausted, and Sherlock didn't feel much better than when he'd awoken. What little he'd eaten sat heavily in his stomach. It was odd that Lestrade hadn't contacted them yet with news of the arrest; he was usually quite prompt to report when Sherlock's information led to success. Sherlock fired off a text in this regard while John signalled for the bill. He then nodded towards the phone and asked "What've you got?" It rang just then, a call from Lestrade.

"Haven't got him yet," he said. "He's left work, but his wife doesn't know where he is. Says he's usually in by six."

"You haven't allowed her to contact him."

"Course not."

Sherlock pondered this for a moment. "Have someone call from the hospital, then get back to me." He hung up. He spun the phone in his fingers and tapped it against the table. His head was still pounding, but the unexpected obstacle had given him a jolt of something. He didn't know that it qualified as adrenaline.

"What?" John said. Sherlock continued tapping, then snatched up the phone and flipped it about.

"They can't find him."

John stilled. The waitress brought the check and he numbly signed off on it. Sherlock stood up abruptly, paced a step forward and spun around. It could be nothing. He could be out buying groceries.

Sherlock's mobile lit up with an incoming text.

 _No answer. We'll wait._

It could be nothing.

John stood and slung on his jacket. "Get us a cab," Sherlock instructed. He wordlessly complied. Sherlock scrolled to Lestrade's number, thumb restlessly tapping before he finally pressed send. The blood was screaming at the back of his eyes and he sincerely hoped he was wrong.

"Get the local police to every location, even those which have turned up nothing. Meet me in Cudham immediately." For once Lestrade asked no questions.

John was waiting outside with a cab. "Should we stop at the flat, do you think?" Meaning his gun.

"No time." Sherlock gave the address to the driver, and John flipped open Lestrade's badge.

"This is police business, so quickly, if you please."

The cabbie's eyes widened. "Right, then."

They climbed into the cab. Sherlock shot John an appraising glance, but he was staring grimly forward. "I hope you're wrong," he said. They pulled out into the London traffic, and Sherlock didn't bother to concur.


	6. Chapter 6

Considering the time it would have taken to abduct a victim out of Wandsworth, then navigate London traffic with precautionary adherence to speed limits, Sherlock estimated Cartwright's time of arrival to be no sooner than 7:15. It was a fifty minute drive from Central London, but the cabbie could have them there in thirty, he said, after John had outlined the gravity of the situation. The local police should have been able to anticipate the killer by at least ten minutes, though Sherlock had very little faith in them to do even that much. He thumbed his mobile for traffic patterns. By 7:30 there had been no further information from Lestrade, which meant one of two things: Sherlock had sounded a false alarm, or the killer had driven to an unknown location. In the case of the latter, the victim would have been killed by now. This would upset John, but it would also cement the case against Cartwright once he was arrested and the body discovered.

Sherlock glanced out the window. It had rained minutely as they had turned onto the M25, and twilight had dropped the landscape into a uniform grey. Houses were scattered across the broad fields, few within listening distance of each other. The worst crimes were always committed in the country.

The abandoned house near which the first two bodies had been discovered was at the end of a short but densely overgrown dirt lane, and the first thing Sherlock noticed upon pulling in were the several sets of tire marks pressed into the damp soil.

"No," he said. "No, no, no." They emerged onto the yard, where two police cars had pulled a discreet distance behind some high ragged shrubs. Sherlock leaped from the cab before it had come to a halt.

"Are you absolutely incompetent?" he demanded. The officers exchanged glances over their vehicles. God, they positively redefined the term stupid. "Do you think a man who has perpetrated _nine_ serial murders in the last twenty years wouldn't notice four sets of tracks in the fresh mud leading to what is supposedly an _abandoned_ location?"

John had followed him out of the cab and laid a placating hand on his shoulder. Sherlock shrugged him off sharply. He was furious.

One of the seasoned officers stepped forward. "We've got officers stationed at every junction leading in. _If_ he enters the area, we'll get him. Are you with Scotland Yard?"

"Yes," John said. "We're with Detective Inspector Lestrade, we -"

"But you're not with the police." The man was skeptically eyeing the cab, the driver of which seemed uncertain whether he should remain in the vehicle. His door was open but he had yet to step out.

"No, we - this is - we work for Lestrade -"

"Shut up," Sherlock shouted. "Everyone shut up." Obviously Cartwright would have entered the area before the lookouts were stationed. There would have still been daylight. Even an idiot would have noticed the fresh tire marks. He would have kept driving.

"We can't permit you to remain in the area unless -"

"Shut _up._ " Sherlock pressed the tips of his fingers to his head, pacing a tight circle. He would have been running out of time on the thiopental. He would have pulled off as soon as possible and made a quick kill. Sherlock's eyes snapped open and he gestured John quickly back into the cab, leaving the Cudham police to guard the worthless, dilapidated building, doing the only thing they were good at, which was nothing.

"Drive down the road," he told the cabbie. "The same direction we were traveling. Watch for where he turned off, it will be hidden, not too deeply into the woods." He strained his gaze into the deepening gloom. The sun had just set. Cartwright had been at Wandsworth Hospital until shortly past five. The locations of the abductions always corresponded with his place of work, as did the locations of the murders. Three months ago he had killed a boy at exactly the place where Sherlock had just left four blithering imbeciles who should have never received diplomas, let alone law enforcement badges.

"There," he said. There was a blind turnoff ahead, not much more than a trail. If the killer were in Cudham, and by now Sherlock was certain he was, he would have utilized it. The cabbie had to swerve to make the turn, and bottomed out over a stony ditch. After a short distance his headlights glanced off of a green Ford Focus tucked into the side of the trail. Sherlock had his key ring torch out, and in an instant had picked up the trail of a large object having been dragged from the passenger side of the car. The body of the boy, obviously. However, twenty yards further into the woods it was a dazed and bloodied Alan Cartwright they found staggering to his feet.

Blow to the head, hard jagged object. Rock, Sherlock noted. Clothes damp, dirty. Unconscious seven to ten minutes. Victim escaped to the southwest.

The man was doused in darkness as Sherlock pocketed the torch. He managed to shield his face with one arm before Sherlock seized him by the lapel and with his right elbow delivered a crushing blow to the side of the head. He dropped like a lead weight, and Sherlock aimed the light of the torch at him once more. From the angle of the cut, the boy must have been directly beneath him. There were signs on his clothes of a protracted struggle, particularly at the elbows and knees. And the rock - Ah, there it was.

"There will be a length of rope in the car," Sherlock said. He shined the torch briefly at the cabbie, a middle aged man of no very impressive stature. Thick grey mustache. He gaped at Sherlock, and at the man on the ground. "We'll need it to secure him until the police arrive." Sherlock retrieved his phone from his pocket, and heard the cabbie traipse back the way they had come. John had knelt beside the fallen man and was taking his pulse. How troublesome, to be a man like John, concerned with the fates of even the lowest order of society. Now, should he text or call, Sherlock wondered. A text would suffice. Something very close to euphoria was sweeping though his system. He had been right! Of course he had been right.

"Where is he?" John asked.

"Who?" _Two miles south, _he texted. _We'll be in the cab.___

"The kid."

Sherlock pressed send. "Hm. Ah, good." He heard the cabbie returning. In the dim moonlight he could see the man had found the rope as well as recalled the route back to them; all of this without asking one single moronic question. This placed him in intelligence above most of the Metropolitan Police Force.

"Sherlock -"

"Stop worrying. The police will find him." Sherlock took the rope and let the length of it drop to the ground. "Help me." He knelt and began binding Cartwright at the ankles. Sherlock's phone rang, and he ignored it. When he got home, he was going to have a bath. A hot one. Then he was going to lounge about the sitting room and listen to Bach's Concerto in A Minor. John snatched one end of the rope and quickly bound the man's wrists, then hoisted him up and began dragging him back towards the road before Sherlock had completed his knot. The cabbie moved in to assist, and Sherlock's phone finally stopped ringing.

When they reached the cab, John wanted to close their captive into the boot.

"Don't be ridiculous," Sherlock said. "Lestrade will be here any moment." It was only then that he noticed John's demeanor had gone from grim to something swiftly approaching panic.

"I can't - " John was saying. "I - Sherlock, you have to help me." His voice was ragged in a way that had nothing to do with lugging Cartwright's dead weight twenty yards through the darkened forest. Sherlock was suddenly annoyed. John had left Cartwright to the cabbie and was headed back to where they had found him. Sherlock drew a sharp breath through his teeth. This was over, damn it. They had their man. Sirens sounded a mile up the road.

"Get him in, wait at the road. The police will be here shortly," he told the cabbie, then darted after his errant and infuriating flatmate. John didn't even have his torch on him; he was navigating by the light of his mobile. Sherlock caught up to him quickly. "It's this way," he said. Tracking a terrified teenager though a dense, muddy forest was elementary, except John didn't seem able to find so much as his hands at the moment. It wasn't worth losing John in the forest as well: Sherlock did want to get home at some point.

Whoever the boy was, he had certainly managed to put a great deal of distance between himself and his attacker. The trail was harried and clumsy, a result, no doubt, of his haste compounded with the disorienting effects of the drug. John had fallen in behind, his erratic behavior thankfully dispensed with now that he was on the move. Tearing through the forest, Sherlock felt a surge of fondness for him that was heightened by the elation of the chase. Once one understood that John's only imperative was action, he was not only easy to please, but easy to manage as well.

Sherlock leaped nimbly over a gnarled root that, from the upturned earth, he knew had earlier tripped their quarry. A great flurry of movement broke out thirty feet ahead, a frantic snap and crash of underbrush. The limited beam of the torch couldn't illuminate the boy at that distance, but Sherlock set on him like a greyhound. The adrenaline was so thick in his blood he could taste it. He overtook the boy in a matter of seconds, and took him down with a deft tackle that sent them both skidding into the forest floor. The boy elbowed him viciously in the solar plexus. He was quite powerful despite his size, and Sherlock nearly lost his hold. He gripped the boy to his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. Neither had any leverage, and in scrambling to escape, the boy whipped his head back, catching Sherlock sharply below the eye. Sherlock fought to lean his weight on top of the boy, and finally was able to jerk one arm behind his back, rolling him face down into the ground. His struggle now futile, the boy began to emit a high pitched shriek, similar to the sound a rabbit will make in the jaws of a dog. Interesting, the effects of panic on the human mind.

Abruptly, Sherlock was wrenched up by the neck of his blazer and tossed aside.

"What the fuck are you doing?" John cried. Kneeling, he snatched the boy up to him in a sideways half-restraining embrace. In the light afforded by the rising moon, Sherlock watched the boy sink his teeth into John's arm.

"It's alright," John said. "It's alright, I'm going to help you." The kid twisted, kicked, and clawed at him, the rabbit sound subsiding into shrill and rhythmic sobs. "You're going to be alright, okay? I'm like you. I'm just like you."

Sherlock reached for the torch where it had fallen during the scuffle. He touched his fingers to his cheek, but there didn't seem to be any blood. He was panting lightly, and he sat for a moment, regaining his breath. He shined the light on John and the boy. Fifteen, blond hair worn slightly long. His face was badly bruised along the left side, and there were livid welts at his throat. His canvas jacket was torn along the sleeve, caked with mud and blood. He had stopped struggling and now leaned heavily into John, trembling violently. His face was pulled into a grotesque and tearful grimace. John was stroking the side of his head, and Sherlock felt something twist inside him in a manner that was decidedly unpleasant. The sooner they got rid of this child, the better.

Sherlock staggered to his feet, his head reeling. He pressed the back of his hand along his upper lip, and then answered his ringing phone. It was Lestrade.

"We've got your trail, How far are you? Have you got him?"

Sherlock glanced back at John. "Yes. A mile and half, approximately." A concoction of spit, snot, and tears had sluiced down the boy's face, soaking the arm of John's jumper.

"Is he alright?"

"How would I know?" Sherlock snapped, and hung up. He slid the phone back into his pocket, brushed a few leaves from his clothes, smoothed his rumpled blazer. It would take at least half an hour to walk back to the road. John seemed content to simply sit in the dirt with some stranger's child, uttering those constant nonsense syllables that were probably supposed to be soothing. Frustration welled up inside Sherlock, alongside the nameless anxiety that had been festering since Friday. Since the morning he had driven John away.

Sherlock worried at a thumbnail with his teeth. There was no sound in the forest but John's low murmur, and the sucking wet breaths of the sobbing boy. Twenty years ago that had been John sitting there, a filthy, terrified wreck of a human being. How simple it could have been - how easy it was to kill a child, overpower him, string him up, bury him, and then John wouldn't be here at all. He might still have been at Theydon Bois, or in the forensics lab at Scotland Yard. Sherlock would have held the yellow skull in his hands, clinically examined the fissures, the eye sockets, the small, even teeth. He wouldn't have spared a thought for the boy to whom it had belonged. Why would he?

Sherlock felt as though he'd been gutted; a cold clenching hollow from sternum to groin. Everything considered, the abduction, the war, the London traffic patterns - the odds were infinitesimal that John should ever have limped into Bart's that day, the one man on earth who could ever like such a person as Sherlock Holmes. And instead of standing beside him now, Sherlock found himself walking away.

The night air had a damp, earthy quality, and smelled of wet leaves. Sherlock's elbows and knees grew chill where the moisture had soaked into his clothes. The adrenaline had worn off and left him again with his searing headache and the flat, murky flavor of yesterday's overdose. The battery on the torch was failing, and Sherlock stumbled through the woods until he realized he didn't know where he was. Then he stood there in the dark, alone.

His brain had gone numb. It was a curious sensation, the not-quite absence of thought. It didn't often happen, but it did on occasions when he had reached the absolute limit of his endurance. There was a sudden whuffling at his knees, and Sherlock's world was reduced to the blue-white glare of a police torch. An Alsatian was examining the hem of his trousers.

"Sherlock?" The voice was Lestrade's. "What are you doing? Where's the boy? Where's John?"

Sherlock half turned and gestured to the entirety of the forest. Ah, it seemed he hadn't left the trail after all: there was a footprint, one of his own, leading in the opposite direction. That was good, it meant he hadn't actually been lost. He raised his arm against the glare of the torch, and continued past the knot of police. Lestrade stopped him with a hand on his arm. He aimed the torch directly into Sherlock's eyes. The headache began to descend the length of his spine. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

"Go ahead," Lestrade ordered. Sherlock did. Lestrade hadn't been talking to him, apparently, because the grip on his arm tightened.

"What are you doing out here? Why didn't you stay with the boy?"

Because he didn't give a shit about the boy, quite frankly. But the boy was with John, and he should have stayed with John. It was too late now. Sherlock twisted free and looked away into the darkness. If he continued in this direction, even without the trail he would eventually converge with the road.

"Sherlock - "

Sherlock pushed past him. Actually the trail was quite distinct now that five more bodies and a dog had been through it.

"Go with him," he heard Lestrade say, and he was joined by an officer. Sherlock spun around, his hand outstretched.

"The torch," he said.

"I'll lead." It was a woman.

"You will not. Give it to me."

The officer wavered a long moment before handing him the torch. Sherlock snatched it away and directed it at her. She flinched. Thirty-seven, married. One child, a daughter. Small dog, most likely a variety of spaniel. Sherlock turned back to the trail.

He didn't know why he had left. He didn't recall having decided to do so, but now that he had it took on the colour of inevitability. Of course at a critical moment Sherlock would disappoint the only person who really mattered to him. He knew he disappointed John regularly, but this was different in a way that Sherlock could only barely grasp. It had something to do with the way John had held the boy, after Sherlock had frightened him. It was protective and gentle, like the shoes at the foot of the couch. John cared about people that way, and Sherlock obviously couldn't. Wasn't that what everyone had always said? Wasn't that what he had just proven? A mile of darkened forest stretched between them now, and the only thing that Sherlock could feel was a consuming self-pity. John would likely leave him now, this time for good, and why shouldn't he? Sherlock had nothing to offer a man like John, so he would be alone, like he had always been before.

It was a long mile back to the cab. The officer had finally given up getting any information out of him, her curiosity waning into resentment. Sherlock had cost her the opportunity to feel heroic, a worthless incentive which nonetheless motivated most of the police force. However, her presence was somewhat valuable. Sherlock would quit consulting and move to Poland before he allowed himself to lose his way before an agent of Scotland Yard.

When the reached the road, the cabbie was leaning on the bonnet of his vehicle, chatting with a couple of officers. There was an ambulance, empty; Alan Cartwright had already been removed from the scene. Sherlock wordlessly climbed into the rear passenger side of the cab. Blood had congealed on the seat where the killer had briefly lain.

The cabbie leaned his head through the open driver's side window. "How are you? Alright?"

Sherlock closed his eyes and leaned his forehead on the cool window glass. He heard the cabbie open the door, felt the cab shift as he settled behind the wheel.

"That was a serial killer you had there. Police've told me all about it."

Sherlock's eyes flickered open, checking the driver's ID. At the very least, one Douglas Kennedy would have a yarn to spin for his mates at the pub. How well everything had worked out for everyone else. Sherlock closed his eyes again, taking shallow breaths through his mouth.

There had been times back at Baker Street, in the evenings, when John had sat in his chair, reading the newspaper, and Sherlock felt he could have curled up at his feet and slept for a season. He hadn't, of course, but he wondered if that was what love felt like. It didn't matter. He had lived without that feeling for thirty years. Sherlock opened the door, leaned from the side of the cab, and was thoroughly sick.


	7. Chapter 7

The ride home took considerably longer with the cabbie now legally obliged to heed the speed limit. Sherlock had been staring moodily out the window, and John frankly couldn't be fussed to figure out why. He longed to be back at the flat, possibly drinking himself into oblivion. He wondered if he couldn't fob Sherlock off on Mrs. Hudson while he pursued this end.

They pulled up outside 221, and Sherlock wordlessly swiped his credit card. The cabbie had for the last half hour finally quit his nattering, but he started up again now that his adventure was reaching its conclusion. John briefly closed his eyes. It wouldn't do to be rude, but he really, really wanted this day to be over. The cabbie twisted around, holding out a business card.

"If you ever need anything, I'll be happy to help," he said.

With some effort, John managed a smile. "Of course." He took the card and got out of the cab.

Sherlock stormed up the steps ahead of him, and for a moment John marveled at his stamina. He was already into the flat and shedding his blazer while John seriously considered giving up and having a kip on the landing. He was inside, right? He wouldn't be in Mrs. Hudson's way, and it was just for one night.

Sherlock was clanking around in the kitchen. He had probably dreamed up some bizarre new experiment which would keep him up till dawn. John would end up lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and methodically convincing himself that none of this had ever happened so that he might one day get to sleep. Or he had those drugs he had never used, if Sherlock hadn't preemptively discarded them. John wanted to take them all.

The boy's name had been Christopher. Chris. John had known several Chris's in his life, one of whom was now a triple amputee and blind in one eye. This Chris, the one today, would be physically fine, though the emotional backlash would be severe. He had clung to John like a monkey for over an hour, and the faint smell of his urine still lingered on John's clothes. He had calmed considerably during the walk back to the road, but his grip on John's arm had been convulsively tight, and it had been another ten minutes before they could gently coerce him into the ambulance, which would bring him to the hospital where his parents were waiting. Then John had stood behind, his mind a cottony hollow, and watched the ambulance pull away, its blue lights flashing silently.

John made good use of the banister to finish his climb. There was a liquid feeling in his wrists and he knew his hands would shake if he held them out. When he reached the flat his jacket fell from his fingers before he could hang it, and John left it there on the floor. It was filthy, anyway. Before beginning the arduous trek up to his bedroom, John peeked in at Sherlock; just a habit. He was grappling with a box of tea bags, and had two cups set out on saucers. The small orange kettle light was on.

"None for me, thanks. I'm knackered."

Sherlock drew ominously still.

"I'm just going to head up, if that's alright."

With one firm, deliberate motion, Sherlock swept the teacups from the counter, where they fell to the floor and shattered. He faced the cupboards with his shoulders drawn rigidly forward, and John blinked several times. Perhaps that hadn't actually happened. He said slowly, "On second thought, tea sounds great."

There was a considerable pause. John's thoughts were only firing in quarter time, and he wasn't sure how long he stood, attempting to attach an appropriate response to what he was increasingly certain he had just witnessed. His brow furrowed, his mouth had drifted open, and his only thought now was "okay, now do something." Sherlock hadn't moved at all. Neither had the shards of their only teacups. John stepped tentatively across the kitchen, peering around Sherlock's shoulder, at his face. He was staring blindly at the cupboard handles, eerily still. Only his nostrils quivered.

"Sherlock," John breathed, feeling at a frightful loss. Whatever it was Sherlock needed to hear, John wasn't sure he could deliver. He wanted so badly to go to bed. Sherlock spoke abruptly, and his tone was clipped and almost confrontational.

"I consider you my friend, John. And as you are the only one I have ever had, I don't like to consider that we may never have met."

John's heart dropped so quickly he felt sick. Sherlock never considered the may-have-beens when he had the solid truth before him. When things were uncertain, his mind could fire off a thousand possible scenarios, but he would condemn it as a grievous misuse of his mental powers to examine - _all the ways in which that could have happened,_ John had said to him, just yesterday. _It would be my mangled skeleton,_ he'd told him, wanting him to consider, knowing that he never would. But if he had? With an imagination like Sherlock's...John felt as though someone had wrapped a length of barbed wire around his lungs. "Oh God," he said. Oh God, and he was so tired. He settled one arm around Sherlock's shoulders, other hand brushing loosely over his dark curls, settling at the base of his head. Sherlock endured this embrace like a wooden puppet.

"Don't think like that," John pleaded, his hand stroking Sherlock's hair. "Please don't think like that."

When Sherlock spoke, his voice was tight and it quivered oddly. "I know I disappoint you."

John nearly pulled away in confusion. _What?_ What on earth was he on about? "I'm not disappointed." He continued stroking the soft, dark hair, and Sherlock mouthed something in a pained whisper that he couldn't hear.

"I'm not, Sherlock. I'm not disappointed. Why would you think that?"

Sherlock swallowed thickly. His voice was impossibly small. "I know that I'm not...I know I don't..." His forehead sank to John's shoulder.

"It's okay," John whispered. "I'm not upset."

The tension began to seep from his body as John spoke softly into his ear. It was the same things he'd said to the child earlier, and it was all he could think of now. He had told it to a hundred wounded soldiers; he had told it to himself, all those years ago. "It's alright. Everything is going to be fine." Sherlock relaxed and leaned heavily against him.

When John had awoken, that time in the cabin, he had smelled first the wet rotting wood of the walls, tasted the sodden rope in his mouth. Then the smooth, warm hands tightened around his throat. He had been afraid, of course, but it wasn't until after, alone in the woods, that he had resorted to pleading with God, a god he hadn't been sure he even believed in. He had prayed desperately, because there was no one else. It seemed there hadn't ever been, since then. John was always alone.

He drew Sherlock closer to him. He would never let Sherlock feel like that, ever. He pressed his nose to that bony shoulder and exhaled warmly against it. Sherlock's hands crept up to cling to the edge of his jumper. Everything was going to be fine.

The muscles in John's bad arm began to tense, and he dropped it down to Sherlock's elbow, thumb playing over the smooth fabric of his shirt. He was tired, and this was warm and nice. When Sherlock began to pull away, he trailed his nose along John's cheek and John could feel the warm breath on his lips - it would take nothing, absolutely nothing to close that distance. His lips parted without his consent, and if he turned his head ever so slightly...The barbed wire feeling returned to his lungs, and inexplicably John felt that he would soon either panic or cry. His hand closed on Sherlock's elbow, hard.

"I can't," he said. Sherlock drew back with alacrity, but John tightly held him still. His throat was swelling shut and he felt the tears prick at his eyes, and God, he was being so stupid, this was what he _wanted._

"I can't right now, Sherlock. Just not right now. Okay?" He knew his grip was brutal on Sherlock's arm and the back of his neck, but he couldn't let go. He began to cry; thin, silent sobs punctuated with knife-like breaths. "I can't, just not right now." John wrenched himself away.

" _Shit,_ " he said. "Oh, fuck. Oh God." His hand was to his mouth, his knee was giving out, and Sherlock hovered uncertainly before him. John found his way into a chair, where he rocked convulsively, cursing.

"Oh shit, I should have killed him. I could have killed him and I didn't."

Eight people were dead because of John. Eight more, on top of everyone he'd let die in the desert. He could have done everything so differently. If he had, if he could have -

He was pinned beneath an overturned jeep. Blood from the driver's splintered face had dripped onto him long after the screaming had stopped. Charlie Bradford had been bludgeoned to death, just a child, Jackson Long, and all the others. If John had only killed that man - that's when everything had begun to go wrong. That's why Harry had left, that's why his parents had divorced, that's why he was such an utter fuck-up at everything. He'd lost his entire unit in less than an hour, and watched it happen, with a bullet in his shoulder and one leg pinned beneath the jeep.

Something was thrust into his hands; a tall glass of scalding hot tea. John held it tightly, letting it burn his hands where the skin was the thinnest.

"John, you were a child," Sherlock said. "You couldn't have been expected to - " John ignored him, struggling to catch his breath. It was fine. Everything was going to be fine. He should have killed him but he hadn't. That's just the way it was. It didn't change anything. That man would die in prison. John focused on the burning in his hands. He was a doctor. He saved people's lives. He had saved Sherlock's life with that stupid pill, and he helped Sherlock catch killers. That was good. John did good things. He was good. He was okay.

The tea was monstrously hot, and John had to set it down. Sherlock Holmes considered himself an unparalleled genius, yet while his flatmate was in the midst of nervous collapse, his best idea was to hand him a glass of boiling water. It had helped, though. It was the only time Sherlock had made him tea. John scrubbed at his face with the back of his hand, still breathing unevenly through his teeth. Sherlock had pulled a chair around to face him, and when John glanced at him his eyes were wide and scared. He really was an idiot.

"We've got mugs, you know," John said, and forced himself all the way calm.

It was a moment before Sherlock replied. "Yes, well you've put them all away somewhere."

John made a weak attempt at laughter. After awhile he fished the tea bag from his glass. He set it on the plate of french toast he had made sometime within the last millennium. The corner of a single slice had been torn off and placed back on the plate. Sherlock's idea of breakfast.

"You're tired," Sherlock said.

"Need to have a shower." John's whole body ached, and he really did smell quite foul, but it was another few minutes before he levered himself up. Sherlock followed quickly, clearly anxious. John had to leave him in the kitchen though. He was too exhausted to be embarrassed, but he needed to be alone.

John groaned when he stepped under the hot spray of the shower. He stood there for a long while, just letting it wash over him. Christopher would be home with his family by now. He wasn't dead or lost. It was thanks to Sherlock they had found him at all. John allowed his thoughts to drift. Sherlock had wanted to kiss him.

John didn't know what that meant, exactly. For all he knew, Sherlock had gotten the idea off the telly - he was surprisingly impressionable, and it wouldn't be the first time he had mimicked what he saw. John had only yesterday considered that he might want something like that, a relationship with Sherlock. And he hadn't been in quite the proper frame of mind to think it through. That Sherlock might want something similar had seemed well outside the realm of possibility, and still probably was, to be honest. He knew the origin of every type of dirt in Greater London, but he didn't know a bleeding thing about himself.

Even if the possibility were on the table, John wasn't convinced he could do it. It was the sort of thing that sounded a great deal easier when it happened to other people, blokes on the telly. People like John Watson were supposed to get married and have a couple of kids. People like him; whatever that meant. John shut off the water and stepped out of the shower. He already knew he didn't belong with the people who were supposedly like him. "People like him" didn't jump the roofs of London in pursuit of murderers and thieves, they didn't thrive on the thrill of it. "People like him" weren't in love with Sherlock Holmes, so that didn't make him very much like the people like him, did it. John wrapped a towel around his waist, gathered his clothes, and headed up to his room. Sherlock was doing his typhoon impression in the sitting room, and John figured he could deal with that when he was dressed.

When he came back downstairs, the map of London had been torn from the wall, the red and yellow pins now dotting a floor that was miraculously clear of papers. Sherlock was toting about a large trash bag, binning all but the select documents he would keep for his files. What passed for files, anyway. John stood to the side of the table, and when the old high school photos of the murdered boys went into the bag, he didn't protest, though he considered it.

John went into the kitchen and searched the cabinets until he found a mug. Though nearly all the domestic responsibilities fell to him, he was far from exacting, and dishes were put away wherever there happened to be room. He poured his tea into the mug, then popped it into the microwave for a minute. Sherlock bustled into the hall, threw open the door, and chucked his knotted trash bag down the steps. A thin sheen of sweat had broken out about his brow.

The microwave beeped, and John took his tea into the sitting room. Eventually Sherlock joined him, moving far slower than a moment ago. He seemed to exert the last of his energy cracking open the window, then he climbed into the chair opposite John, curling up like an egg. A cool moisture drifted into the room. It had been raining for some time. John studied his flatmate, the tired lines on his gaunt face.

"He'll receive two life sentences based on your testimony and the boy's," Sherlock said.

John considered this. "Two should suffice."

"They can't convict for the murders yet, I'll have to-"

"No," John said. "Two is fine."

"No parole, obviously."

"No."

They were silent for a time. Sherlock had begun to slump sideways. He would probably sleep for several days, and John should probably see to it that he were at least properly in bed. The knees of his trousers were stained black with mud.

"Will you go to work tomorrow?" Sherlock asked. John nearly laughed at the notion.

"Um, no. I think I've earned a holiday."

Sherlock took some time to process this, head drifting ever closer to the arm of the chair. "Good," he said.

How a man Sherlock's size could curl into a single arm chair was beyond John, but that's where he slept, more often than not. His shoes had tracked mud up onto the cushion.

"I love you," John said. "You know that."

Sherlock hesitated long enough to indicate that no, he hadn't, but he nodded briskly anyway. In another moment he was asleep, and John watched him, listening to the rain and the cars swishing over the road. He set his tea on the table and slowly rose, fetching the blanket from the sofa. He tucked it in around his flatmate, then carefully pried the muddy shoes from his feet, setting them toes out on the floor. He switched off the light and sat back down in the rose-colored darkness, pink from the city lights caught on the clouds. A cool breeze fluttered in past the curtain, carrying the fresh scent of the rain.


End file.
